Friday, May 11, 2007

A peek at my apron project:Having fun with this one and, yes Helen, I really am making progress on my other project (thank you for keeping me honest!) and will surprise everyone, including myself, with an amazing update in about a month (I hope).

Meanwhile, Ken says the microwave thing is hooey, based on his thorough 10 minutes of Internet research. Says the science just isn't behind the claim and that more active research would be underway and available if there were legit concerns. Rationally, I can process that (and I, too, can be skeptical of what I read online). At the same time (and, perhaps, sparked by this little picnic scene), I think about a strong summer memory from my own childhood: mercurachrome. Were you subjected to this stuff? It went on every cut and scrape than I got -- a bright, neon-y orange/red color, it came in a little brown bottle and had a smell so unlike anything else that I can close my eyes and smell it. It stung to high heaven, but every mom in the neighborhood dispensed it to prevent infection in cuts. The thing was -- it contained mercury. So when someone finally figured out that introducing mercury directly to the bloodstream wasn't such a great idea after all, out it went. Ooops! Now gone the way of lawn darts, and margarine, and Pluto.

My point is just that while I can understand the lack, now, of scientific evidence against old mr. microwave, I wonder what we'll know 40 years from now that makes us say, "OH MY GOD!, can you believe people actually had these things in their HOMES? And cooked FOOD in them?" and I think of mercurachrome. No mom back in 1967 thought she was doing anything other than precisely the right thing by slathering it on her children. (Although I guess I'm still alive and don't know what the harm is, yet, that's been done, but I know I don't like to think about it too much, either!) Sigh. Ken also made the environmental argument -- fewer dishes to wash! less energy used! I was kind of liking the idea of getting the counter space back....

2 comments:

Here's a solution: keep the microwave but move it to the garage and use it for dying fabrics in. You still save time but you don't have to worry abouit eating dodgy stuff. Personally, there is enough dodgy about the contents of my fridge before they even go in the microwave that nuking them can only improve matters!

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My son, then about 4 years old, was being his wild self right at bedtime. I said, "no more monkey business!" in my best stern-mom voice, and he looked me gleefully in the eye and declared, "infinity more monkeys!"